Stunning. The Halloween night shooting of Kristen Burnette means that for the third time in less than two years, a 13-year-old Columbia County girl has been shot to death by a Columbia County boy. In each case, no adults were in the home at the time, and the boy was using a weapon taken from an absent adult.

In all three cases, families and friends on both sides have been devastated, and the broader community is stunned. Whatever can be done to prevent such tragedy clearly isn’t happening.

Someone recently compared the day after an election to Groundhog Day: We poke our heads out from under the covers, and if we see the shadow of the other guy, we predict four more years of discontent.

Whatever the outcome of this year’s elections, roughly half of America is waking up unhappy today (assuming, of course, we’ve been able to definitively sort things out by now). I’m just hoping the unhappy half hasn’t been expressing their discontent by breaking and burning stuff.

Regardless of how the presidential race between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney plays out, Georgia Republicans should have something significant to celebrate the day after the election.

Just eight years after the GOP took control of the General Assembly in the 2004 elections, they are poised to win more than two-thirds control of both legislative chambers (that’s 120 seats in the House of Representatives and 38 in the Senate).

I look in awesome wonder at the criticisms and character attacks heaped upon people who choose to offer themselves for public office. In most cases these attacks are born of absolute lies.

How many of us would wish the same thing on our family and ourselves? What causes people who will never put themselves into a political contest to be so critical of those who try? How many wish to be called a “Honey Boo Boo” and nincompoop, incapable and political bum, and have their family endure the pain of reading such comments?

Halloween has passed, but you might need to be afraid for another reason. You might need to be afraid for the future of good government. I’m not talking about if Obama were to get re-elected. I’m talking about something closer to home; a local race.

Another Columbia County teenage girl is dead from a gunshot fired by another teenage Columbia County boy, the third time in less than two years. On the other side of the county, a 79-year-old woman has died after being pulled from a burning home.